A.S. Byatt
I was quite astounded today as I was going through my huge archive of 35 years’ worth of my writing in my computer (my first computer was a 1982 Osborne), and I discovered an interview article I did with the Booker Prize-winning author, A.S. Byatt. Strangely – or not, given the ravages of age – I had completely forgotten that I ever did it. I performed the interview and wrote the article in 1991 and it was immediately rejected by an editor and immediately, for some reason, relegated to my archives as of no interest to anyone. Because it was 1991, the only way it COULD be published at the time was to submit it to print publications, and I probably had gotten tired of all the submissions I had already made for the article that inspired it: my article about the world’s most prolific writers of books in English (which was eventually published as the lead essay on the front page of the Los Angeles Times Book Review. So I “trashed” this Byatt interview, which I also had tied in not only with the theme of prolificacy, but also with the centennial of George Gissing’s novel, New Grub Street. In fact, finding it now, I see it was a lively, fantastic interview with an important British author who is still alive today, at age 82. So no sooner did I discover it today than I decided to add it to my collection on this blog of “Brad’s Rejected Writings.” Check it out, this 1991 interview with A.S. Byatt.